The irony of mulling the stereotype that Goa has become, while sitting with foreigners, entertainers and socialites, isn’t a worry.
THE GOA DEBATE CONTINUES. Armed with a lethal cocktail of sex, drugs, violence and encompassing issues like gender, parenting, clash between cultures and political venality, it is easy to see why it occupies us so much. NDTV did a show on the beach, populating it with the usual NDTV kind of people. This meant that apart from Remo, we were privy to the views of Manish Makhija (Udham Singh of Channel V) and Bina Ramani among others. It evoked the usual mix of provocation, blame scattering and self-flagellation that one has come to expect from a discussion of this kind.
The irony of introspecting about the stereotype that Goa has become while sitting on a beach with foreigners, entertainers and socialites did not seem to present any great source of discomfort. Bibek Debroy’s defence of the moneylenders in The Indian Express was extremely readable — it challenged conventional wisdom with robust analysis while pointing towards a possible future direction. Kishore Mahbubani’s “Can India Save the World?” was less successful. The gist of his argument can be summed up as follows: the US losing credibility as world leader/Europe no better/India and China new contenders/China as leader of the world? Give me a break! Therefore, India gets default mantle of world saviour. The article carried the intriguing subhead of “Can Asians Think?” which suggested that while Asia may or may not possess any mental faculties, it could save the world. Something like George W. Bush Part 2.
Mail Today has developed the fine art of showing large photographs of attractive women while apparently evaluating their some-quotient-or-the-other. Gowns, handbags, shoes, backless dresses and suchlike are the ostensible reasons for this deep analysis. The Economic Times too has woken up to the power of gendered visuals. A story headlined “Indian Telcos Want to Retain Foreign Component of ADC” was illustrated by a visual of a girl with her mouth opened very wide, while a story on Lipitor had six photographs of a woman flirting provocatively with a pill.
Ditto for stories on textile exports (girl in funky dress), expats with jobs in retail and manufacturing (girl in front of many bicycles), the new terminal in Heathrow (girl getting out of a car) and Firefox 3 (girl with laptop). Headlines Today has come up with a new ad that summarily describes all other channels with a single word: blah. It claims to be refreshingly different and if their pre-Holi interview with Rakhi Sawant on her Holi plans is anything to go by, it has achieved half its objective.
Courtesy: Tehelka
